Hey, that's a really cool idea! Bundle a PC with Linux/OpenOffice/Mozilla with a PlayStation2. You can sell it for less than a Windows/MSOffice PC, and I think most consumers would be thrilled with the package.
I figure once you've got the basic productivity apps., the main software you purchase for your system is games. With a separate PS2 you can even surf while your kids play!
So how do we convince some major retailer to do this?
In China you can pay 80 Yuan ($10) monthly fee to have a dial-up account, which is affordable for most Chinese.
It depends on where in China, but I expect you're correct for Beijing.
A majority of the netizen in China can surf on Internet right from their home.
The bigger issue here is who can afford to have their own computer at home. Most students, certainly, can not. That's why Internet cafes such as this one (in the University district) are so popular.
I agree with the gist of your message, though. This isn't about trying to prevent Internet access.
In fairness, I've seen both Mandela and Tutu speak up against Mugabe in interviews. I'm not sure what else they can do considering neither is currently in governement.
Thabo Mbeki, on the other hand, is the current president of South Africa and he has no excuse. This and his bizarre statements about AIDS make one wonder if there's any hope of good government in Africa in this century.
I haven't actually read the article (New York Times Free bla bla - I don't feel like registering), but I don't see why a piano performance can't be accurately reproduced. It would be easier than a lot of other instruments (like a violin or trumpet, for example).
You've got 88 keys plus 3 pedals that are hit and released at precise times with a given force. The number of variables is limited and pretty straightforward. A sensor under each key could record the performance accurately, and a regular piano with a bunch of robotic plungers could play it back.
The amount of data is pretty limited as well. Figure 120 samples per second should be adequate, and 256 states for each sample * (88+3=91) data points. Uncompressed, that's 10kB/s, 600kB/m. Given the fact that most piansist's only have 10 fingers you could get that down to 75kB/m even before compression.
Napster providing the avenue for the theft is an accessory to copyright violation. That is a crime.
No it's not. And you can't dismiss the getaway car anology without some justification.
A better analogy might be firearms. Handguns have legitimate uses, but the primary use is killing people. Now when somebody gets shot with a handgun nobody talks about charging the manufacturer with murder. They do talk about banning handguns.
Whatever your position on gun-control, that's at least a more reasonably response. If society decides that Napster-like services are bad then it's reasonable to outlaw them. It's not reasonable to hold Napster responsible for all the crimes committed using the technology.
"Conventional" CPUs (like Intel/Sun/AMD/etc) wouldn't benefit from 128 bits, but the Transmeta chips are VLIW, meaning they cram several instructions into a single word. Doubling the number of bits doubles the number of instructions that can be crammed into a single word. Of course this assumes that you can extract that level of parrallelism from the code.
Ok, I see your point about capacity. The smart card isn't big enough to hold everything that anybody could want.
I don't buy the bit about it being destroyed though. In order to access the database you need to identify the person. Replacing the dependancy on ID with a dependancy on a smart card shouldn't hurt.
The question then is whether the capacity of the card is sufficient for the data that most people need. I've never had an MRI, for example, and the handful of x-rays I've had would fit easily on a 64 Meg smart card. The question then is whether or not the benefits of a centralized system - extra capacity primarily - outweigh the risks and expense.
Keeping lots of data safe in a central place is easy enough. Just encrypt it and give the key to whatever portion you want to reveal to whomever you like. But why?
Say you want to keep your health info there so that your doctor can access it. You could maintain the data online and then give your doctor permission to access it. Fine, but if you can give permission, then you can just as easily supply the data yourself, perhaps on a little smart-card you carry around. There's no need for a centralized system.
In fact, I can't think of any application for this that wouldn't be better served by me maintaining my own data.
Something that would be useful is centralized authentication, and that's easy too, technically at least. Politically it would be very hard to get everybody to agree on a standard and on who would administer the system.
No, they shouldn't sue until all other options have been exhausted. The FSF deals with a lot of GPL violations. Most of them are just the result of misunderstanding and are resolved quietly. That's the best way to handle things if possible. The software is Freed, the company saves face, everybody is happy.
I don't know why Robertson is being such a jerk about this, but if he now releases the source, then there's no long-term harm and that should be the end if it.
If he says "screw you, I'll violate your copyright all I want", then that's another story. RMS should nail him to the wall. I don't know how much of othe code in Lindows belongs to the FSF, but I'm sure it's enough that RMS can put Lindows out of business, and he should do that if they refuse to obey the license. Remember that once the license has been violated, RMS holds all the cards. He can withdraw the license and refuse to let Lindows release their OS, ever.
Your post is quite interesting, and I'm sure that sort of things happens, but the links in the article don't even hint that this is what they're worried about.
Are you aware if Amazon actually does this? I thought that unsold books were supposed to be destroyed, not resold through other channels. Of course a few books do escape, but not that many.
There are a lot of similarities between addiction and compulsion, that's why people get mixed up. The difference is that you can stop your compulsion without any real ill effects. You don't get any withdrawal symptoms, psychological or physical. You might really want to play the game, but you don't have to play the game.
I meant that Nescape & others do better in the weighted results than in the unweighted results. Certainly Apache dominates the market no matter which way you cut it. Even the SSL market, aparently, which wasn't the case a year or two ago.
... it's compulsive behavior. Almost anything can be compulsive. Picking your nose, eating your hair, sucking your thumb, washing your hands fifty times a day, sex - they can all be compulsive, but they're not addictive.
To compare video games to things that are really addictive like smoking or crack is silly. Worse than that, it gives you an excuse not to deal with your compulsion properly. It's way to easy to say "oh, I can't quit - I'm addicted". Nonsense. Go on vacation somewhere where you have better things to do than EverQuest and you'll find your "addiction" wasn't nearly as strong as you'd thought.
As for this poor guy who committed suicide, that's sad. But he obviously had deeper problems. If EverQuest hadn't existed he would have latched on to some other way of escaping from his real life.
Whoops, you linked to the Japanese stats both times. Here's Germany.
The most interesting, though, is this breakdown that ranks sites in a Google-like manner. Apache and IIS both lose a little to Netscape and "other" (also Apache perhaps?), but I think that's the fairest way to compare market share.
That's the theory. Mozilla is supposed to be the equivilent of Linux builds from Linus. End-users are supposed to use vendor versions which have extra special sauce and are cooked a little longer.
It's very nice. I just found out about custom keywords today, and they rock.
You can set up a book mark that takes a parameter and has a shortcut keyword. So now when I type "g keyword" into the urlbar it searches Google for my keyword. Browsing will never be the same:-).
Maybe. I hope so at least:-). I've worked at a couple of ".com"s though, and I know it's easy for intelligent people to get hooked on an idea that can't work.
But yeah, you've got to figure that they're a little more grounded nowadays since the.bomb.
I think your missing the big picture, that if wine works for office, soon you may be able to go into a store and pick up a tax program and just install it
In fact that's what I was trying to say and I do think this is a good sign. I'm a little worried though that CodeWeavers (or other observers) will write this off as a failure (or worse, run into finanicial trouble) if it doesn't sell.
I really don't think a lot of people will want to run MS-Office on Linux, given the existence of StarOffice and OpenOffice.
This is very cool as a technology demenstration though. If big apps like Office run under Wine, it's a good sign for the little applications. It's no longer basic productivity tools that keep people from switching to Linux, it's the fact that you can't go into a store and pick up a tax program, or a spelling game for your toddler, and be confident it will work.
Among other things, the states would require that Microsoft to auction off a license to Linux re-sellers to carry the Office package of programs, which would make Linux more attractive to computer makers and users.
This is an interesting proposal that I hadn't heard about before. Does anybody have a complete list of what the unsettling states have asked for?
Unless I'm misunderstanding something about the article, this makes no sense at all. Rendering a video game isn't nearly the same kind of workload as rendering a movie. The former requires low-latency, whereas the latter can be farmed out and done in batches.
There's no way you're going to get a 1000x performance boost by distributing a video game over the Internet.
I would bet that the real idea is to build in support for distributed multi-player games, and somewhere between the engineers and the marketroids things got horribly twisted.
In fact, Santa doesn't live at North Pole at all, but in Finnish Lapland. How he manages to deliver all those toys in one night is a mystery, but I doubt it would be affected much by his physical starting point anyway since he must move pretty fast.
I think cheap and fast is the whole idea. This is meant to replace current ATA interfaces, so that means cheap, mass produced, and designed for low-end systems (as opposed to big servers).
How does lack of consensus matter? There's no consensus now, so things can't possibly get worse. I don't think there should be any restrictions on what can go under these domains, they're simply a guideline. If your content is targeted at kids, then put it under the.kids domain. If it's meant to titilate, then put it under the.sex domain.
Despite all the strange laws in different places, kids (real kids, not teenagers) aren't particularly interested in sex. The vast majority of people who are interested in sex aren't interested in kids (yeah, I know there are exceptions). The system is self-regulating.
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Hey, that's a really cool idea! Bundle a PC with Linux/OpenOffice/Mozilla with a PlayStation2. You can sell it for less than a Windows/MSOffice PC, and I think most consumers would be thrilled with the package.
I figure once you've got the basic productivity apps., the main software you purchase for your system is games. With a separate PS2 you can even surf while your kids play!
So how do we convince some major retailer to do this?
It depends on where in China, but I expect you're correct for Beijing.
The bigger issue here is who can afford to have their own computer at home. Most students, certainly, can not. That's why Internet cafes such as this one (in the University district) are so popular.
I agree with the gist of your message, though. This isn't about trying to prevent Internet access.
In fairness, I've seen both Mandela and Tutu speak up against Mugabe in interviews. I'm not sure what else they can do considering neither is currently in governement.
Thabo Mbeki, on the other hand, is the current president of South Africa and he has no excuse. This and his bizarre statements about AIDS make one wonder if there's any hope of good government in Africa in this century.
I haven't actually read the article (New York Times Free bla bla - I don't feel like registering), but I don't see why a piano performance can't be accurately reproduced. It would be easier than a lot of other instruments (like a violin or trumpet, for example).
You've got 88 keys plus 3 pedals that are hit and released at precise times with a given force. The number of variables is limited and pretty straightforward. A sensor under each key could record the performance accurately, and a regular piano with a bunch of robotic plungers could play it back.
The amount of data is pretty limited as well. Figure 120 samples per second should be adequate, and 256 states for each sample * (88+3=91) data points. Uncompressed, that's 10kB/s, 600kB/m. Given the fact that most piansist's only have 10 fingers you could get that down to 75kB/m even before compression.
Or am I missing something?
No it's not. And you can't dismiss the getaway car anology without some justification.
A better analogy might be firearms. Handguns have legitimate uses, but the primary use is killing people. Now when somebody gets shot with a handgun nobody talks about charging the manufacturer with murder. They do talk about banning handguns.
Whatever your position on gun-control, that's at least a more reasonably response. If society decides that Napster-like services are bad then it's reasonable to outlaw them. It's not reasonable to hold Napster responsible for all the crimes committed using the technology.
I think the current Transmeta chips are 128 bit.
"Conventional" CPUs (like Intel/Sun/AMD/etc) wouldn't benefit from 128 bits, but the Transmeta chips are VLIW, meaning they cram several instructions into a single word. Doubling the number of bits doubles the number of instructions that can be crammed into a single word. Of course this assumes that you can extract that level of parrallelism from the code.
Ok, I see your point about capacity. The smart card isn't big enough to hold everything that anybody could want.
I don't buy the bit about it being destroyed though. In order to access the database you need to identify the person. Replacing the dependancy on ID with a dependancy on a smart card shouldn't hurt.
The question then is whether the capacity of the card is sufficient for the data that most people need. I've never had an MRI, for example, and the handful of x-rays I've had would fit easily on a 64 Meg smart card. The question then is whether or not the benefits of a centralized system - extra capacity primarily - outweigh the risks and expense.
Keeping lots of data safe in a central place is easy enough. Just encrypt it and give the key to whatever portion you want to reveal to whomever you like. But why?
Say you want to keep your health info there so that your doctor can access it. You could maintain the data online and then give your doctor permission to access it. Fine, but if you can give permission, then you can just as easily supply the data yourself, perhaps on a little smart-card you carry around. There's no need for a centralized system.
In fact, I can't think of any application for this that wouldn't be better served by me maintaining my own data.
Something that would be useful is centralized authentication, and that's easy too, technically at least. Politically it would be very hard to get everybody to agree on a standard and on who would administer the system.
No, they shouldn't sue until all other options have been exhausted. The FSF deals with a lot of GPL violations. Most of them are just the result of misunderstanding and are resolved quietly. That's the best way to handle things if possible. The software is Freed, the company saves face, everybody is happy.
I don't know why Robertson is being such a jerk about this, but if he now releases the source, then there's no long-term harm and that should be the end if it.
If he says "screw you, I'll violate your copyright all I want", then that's another story. RMS should nail him to the wall. I don't know how much of othe code in Lindows belongs to the FSF, but I'm sure it's enough that RMS can put Lindows out of business, and he should do that if they refuse to obey the license. Remember that once the license has been violated, RMS holds all the cards. He can withdraw the license and refuse to let Lindows release their OS, ever.
Your post is quite interesting, and I'm sure that sort of things happens, but the links in the article don't even hint that this is what they're worried about.
Are you aware if Amazon actually does this? I thought that unsold books were supposed to be destroyed, not resold through other channels. Of course a few books do escape, but not that many.
There are a lot of similarities between addiction and compulsion, that's why people get mixed up. The difference is that you can stop your compulsion without any real ill effects. You don't get any withdrawal symptoms, psychological or physical. You might really want to play the game, but you don't have to play the game.
I meant that Nescape & others do better in the weighted results than in the unweighted results. Certainly Apache dominates the market no matter which way you cut it. Even the SSL market, aparently, which wasn't the case a year or two ago.
... it's compulsive behavior. Almost anything can be compulsive. Picking your nose, eating your hair, sucking your thumb, washing your hands fifty times a day, sex - they can all be compulsive, but they're not addictive.
To compare video games to things that are really addictive like smoking or crack is silly. Worse than that, it gives you an excuse not to deal with your compulsion properly. It's way to easy to say "oh, I can't quit - I'm addicted". Nonsense. Go on vacation somewhere where you have better things to do than EverQuest and you'll find your "addiction" wasn't nearly as strong as you'd thought.
As for this poor guy who committed suicide, that's sad. But he obviously had deeper problems. If EverQuest hadn't existed he would have latched on to some other way of escaping from his real life.
Whoops, you linked to the Japanese stats both times. Here's Germany.
The most interesting, though, is this breakdown that ranks sites in a Google-like manner. Apache and IIS both lose a little to Netscape and "other" (also Apache perhaps?), but I think that's the fairest way to compare market share.
Hmm. Is there something about IIS 6.0 that makes it easier to do bulk hosting? Maybe it's time for a special Apache Cybersquatting Edition :-).
That's the theory. Mozilla is supposed to be the equivilent of Linux builds from Linus. End-users are supposed to use vendor versions which have extra special sauce and are cooked a little longer.
It's very nice. I just found out about custom keywords today, and they rock.
You can set up a book mark that takes a parameter and has a shortcut keyword. So now when I type "g keyword" into the urlbar it searches Google for my keyword. Browsing will never be the same :-).
Maybe. I hope so at least :-). I've worked at a couple of ".com"s though, and I know it's easy for intelligent people to get hooked on an idea that can't work.
But yeah, you've got to figure that they're a little more grounded nowadays since the .bomb.
In fact that's what I was trying to say and I do think this is a good sign. I'm a little worried though that CodeWeavers (or other observers) will write this off as a failure (or worse, run into finanicial trouble) if it doesn't sell.
I really don't think a lot of people will want to run MS-Office on Linux, given the existence of StarOffice and OpenOffice.
This is very cool as a technology demenstration though. If big apps like Office run under Wine, it's a good sign for the little applications. It's no longer basic productivity tools that keep people from switching to Linux, it's the fact that you can't go into a store and pick up a tax program, or a spelling game for your toddler, and be confident it will work.
Quoted from The Washington Post:
This is an interesting proposal that I hadn't heard about before. Does anybody have a complete list of what the unsettling states have asked for?
Unless I'm misunderstanding something about the article, this makes no sense at all. Rendering a video game isn't nearly the same kind of workload as rendering a movie. The former requires low-latency, whereas the latter can be farmed out and done in batches.
There's no way you're going to get a 1000x performance boost by distributing a video game over the Internet.
I would bet that the real idea is to build in support for distributed multi-player games, and somewhere between the engineers and the marketroids things got horribly twisted.
In fact, Santa doesn't live at North Pole at all, but in Finnish Lapland. How he manages to deliver all those toys in one night is a mystery, but I doubt it would be affected much by his physical starting point anyway since he must move pretty fast.
I think cheap and fast is the whole idea. This is meant to replace current ATA interfaces, so that means cheap, mass produced, and designed for low-end systems (as opposed to big servers).
How does lack of consensus matter? There's no consensus now, so things can't possibly get worse. I don't think there should be any restrictions on what can go under these domains, they're simply a guideline. If your content is targeted at kids, then put it under the .kids domain. If it's meant to titilate, then put it under the .sex domain.
Despite all the strange laws in different places, kids (real kids, not teenagers) aren't particularly interested in sex. The vast majority of people who are interested in sex aren't interested in kids (yeah, I know there are exceptions). The system is self-regulating.